The art, writing, family and spiritual journey of Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006). Attended Art Schools in Dublin and Amsterdam. The fan club is maintained by her children and grandchildren and her many friends and readers.

Pages

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Hilda van Stockum at 105 - A Long Publishing Life

It is the 105th birthday today of my mother, Hilda van Stockum. She would be 105 years old tomorrow, but she died in 2006 at 98. My siblings have written some appreciations of her life that I will post on the birthday calendar.

Meanwhile, I have been going the publishing agreements she left behind, and I made a table for them below. The first book contract that I find is for "A Day on Skates" with Harper & Brothers, in 1933. The last one was with Bethlehem Books in 1999 - a span of 66 years. That is an amazing career.

A couple of stories about the table that follows. Hilda van Stockum married my father E. R. Marlin in 1932. It was the Depression so they needed money! My father was in New York City looking for work and he visited publishers on his wife's behalf. Viking's May Massee was out the day he called on them (she had just started with Viking, starting their juvenile division, after ten years at Doubleday), so it wasn't an oversight on her part that she didn't jump at the first book. Harper & Bros. had published a book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, so Dad tried them and they bought the book. Millay wrote a nice preface. The book succeeded in getting rave reviews in many publications, including the New Yorker, the NY Times and the Herald Tribune. May Massee wooed Hilda and took 13 of Hilda's books between 1937 and 1965.

Massee retired from Viking around 1960. Hilda's most popular book, "The Winged Watchman," was published next by Farrar Straus, which also published "The Borrowed House" - both about the Occupation of Holland in World War II.

I can't get over the fact that my mom's book "The Winged Watchman" has sold 50,000 copies in 15 years being marketed only to a relatively small group - U.S. and Canadian Christian home schoolers. It gets a 4.1 rating on the graded-on-a-curve Goodreads.com site, with 317 reviewers. It is ranked there in the top dozen books for children about World War II. (If you know the book, please add yourself to the rankers at http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17000.Best_Children_s_Books_about_World_War_II_1939_1945!)